Jennifer’s Journey to Self-Actualization

The Female Voice in Latin American Media

Video Essay Reflection

My research’s two most influential ideas are how narrative structures can reflect and foil gender norms and how engaging with and telling someone else’s story can reveal aspects of that individual they are unable to by themselves. Especially in Latin American works of magical realism, the traditional linear narrative is how masculine history is recounted, with men dominating the public spheres of society. However, in my choice novel The House of the Spirits, the texts that typify the private female life — notebooks, love letters, and mental novels — become the source of narration, foiling the rigid, linear narrative structure with a circular, collective one. Not only does this prove that women can publicize their stories without sacrificing the femininity that characterizes their voice, but that their stories can counter the patriarchal narrative and its self-justifying principles.

Moreover, not only can the female voice deconstruct the machista paradigm, but reconstruct the reality that machismo suppresses. In The House of Spirits, the female Trueba family members interpret even the most explicitly political events in a more romantic, emotional, traditionally feminine light. In doing so, they shed light on the private desires held by men that may have been stifled before. After all, the patriarchy harms more than just women, as machista attitudes oppress most emotions besides aggression and pride. This leaves some men unable to express other sides to their lives even when they truly want to, which is where the female voice fills in the gaps. This marks the second half of my video essay as I explore the humanity of femininity.

Thus, what I want people to learn from my project is that the best storyteller may not always be the one who experienced the story firsthand — of course, this can lead to some messy discourse about who has the right to tell a story, and I don’t claim to know the answer to that question. But I do think it’s important to have space for minorities not just within their own issues, but within other matters that may be indirectly related to them. As long as someone takes the time to understand the perspective their story involves — in the case of The House of the Spirits, the narrator, Alba, is telling her own family history — they can offer nuance that the original perspective may not have been able to express.

Senior Reflection

The most important thing I learned from my time at NNHS is to not be afraid of making time for everything you want to do. As a freshman, I thought dedicating myself to just academics and extracurriculars would be the most effective way to spend my high school career, but now I recognize that more than anything else, that just led to me using my free time to procrastinate. Some of my favorite memories from high school come from when I made time for something I would usually skip or put off (thinking I could learn it in college): post-badminton meet outings with friends, finally exploring my (lack of) fashion sense, or even a simple shopping trip with my mom. And by becoming more involved in the once-neglected aspects of my life, I became more involved with other people. Before this year I sort of existed in a bubble of same-grade friends, but this year I adopted (or imprinted?) onto some underclassmen from my extracurriculars.

So that would be my advice to future seniors: if you’re anything like a procrastinator or time-waster like me, just fill up your time. Force yourself out of your comfort zone, out of your 2-hour nap, and make plans, explore and express yourself, and force yourself into other people’s conversations! After all, you’re a senior: you can do whatever you want 🙂

If you ever followed my Instagram before March of this year, there existed several unfortunate conditions that you might have encountered. The most obvious would be my username: jennifer.xia.trash (now changed to 10outof10nifer, which is taken from my favorite and most iconic Kahoot nickname). The second would be my (also changed, thankfully) profile picture, hastily taken in 8th grade in the Kennedy bus lot. The second would be my biography, which I put a lot of care and deliberation into at the time of constructing it. The most important thing, however, would be that I didn’t respond to anyone’s DMs. Maybe I would have if I actually logged into Instagram more than once every two months, but alas, we can’t always be perfect.

This, of course, begs the question: Why would I have an Instagram in the first place? The answer is quite simple: my account was made against my will.

It all started, as most formative life experiences do, in a summer camp. Conveniently, the duration of this summer camp overlapped with my friend/roommate’s birthday (we’ll call her Sarah for anonymity’s sake, even though her real name is Nathra Ramrajvel – but I’m trying to protect her identity right now). Even more conveniently, since it was the day of her arrival in the mortal world, Sarah had temporarily obtained the right to violate my rights. Remember that media consent form that you have likely encountered before in an academic context? Well, as specified above, Sarah no longer had to concern herself with such trivial matters as “consent.” In other words, she took a short video of me (running away), slapped on those @UT Dallas and @AwesomeMath tags, and thus was the story of my first (Instagram) story.

But a few things did happen before then. In the making of my account, Sarah magnanimously allowed me, to a certain extent, to create my username and biography. So the gears in my brain (population: 2 brain cells) began turning. How could I discreetly cue everybody that my Instagram account was kind of fake? The result: the username of jennifer.xia.trash, and my poetic verse of a bio:

I have high self-esteem. If everyone was me, the world would be a better place. I live on the edge, so don’t talk to me.

I had hoped that someone would read the lines between my self-deprecating username and egotistical biography, noting this jarring contradiction to uncover the truth. Moreover, I had faith that most of my friends would deduct that I did not, in fact, have high self-esteem, and therefore my account was a lie. But reality is often disappointing. That’s how we got to where we are now: me, replying to your DM, 129 weeks later.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a show set in an Asian-inspired fantasy setting that explores themes such as imperialism, generational trauma, and the effects of violence in all their nuances. One character who they explore this through is Katara, specifically in the episode titled “The Southern Raiders.”

For more context on Katara, she is the last waterbender (someone who can manipulate the element of water) from the Southern Water Tribes – note that she is the last because 8 years ago, the Fire Nation’s imperialistic agenda saw them conducting raids at the South Pole to capture or kill every remaining waterbender. Instead of capturing Katara, however, the Fire Nation officer Yon Rha found Katara’s mother instead, who claimed to be the last waterbender to save Katara’s life. Thus, Katara lost her mother forever.

In “The Southern Raiders,” Katara finally has the chance to track down her mother’s killer and find closure – in whatever form that closure may come. “The Southern Raiders” stands out as one of the most mature and morally ambiguous episodes, one delving deep into Katara’s relationship with love and loss, present and past, and justice and revenge. Within it, the story does not outline any right or wrong path for Katara to choose. Rather, the most she can hope for is to choose the path of least regrets.

_____

“This is a journey you need to take. You need to face this man. But when you do, please don’t choose revenge. Let your anger out, and then let it go. Forgive him.”

– Aang to Katara, before her journey

_____

“But I didn’t forgive him. I’ll never forgive him.”

– Katara to Aang

_____

To forgive is to let go of resentment. And for Katara – for someone who was eight years old when she last saw her mother, for someone whose entire childhood was ripped away in the same second her mother’s life was ripped away from her body, for someone who was forced to mature far too quickly to fill in that hollow space left behind by a ghost – that is too much to ask for. Although violence may not have been the answer, a lack of violence does not mean a lack of anger on Katara’s part. Her trauma has wounded her too much to prevent her grief from spilling into anger, and Katara can let neither her grief nor rage go.

No, forgiveness is not the reason why Katara found closure.

That grief and that rage, however, no longer overwhelm her in the way they used to. Something gives way during that confrontation with Yon Rha, but what is it? What is the realization that frees her from her hurt, that paves the foundation for her healing?
_____

“I always wondered what kind of person could do such a thing, but now that I see you, I think I understand. There’s just nothing inside you, nothing at all. You’re pathetic and sad and empty.”

– Katara
_____

After she spares Yon Rha, Katara tells him that he’s “nothing.” For the individual who clings to the nebulous concepts of “meaning” and “purpose” for their entire lifespan, to be “nothing” is to be faced with eternal damnation. Someone who is “pathetic and sad and empty” is someone who lives but is not alive, running through the motions of each day mechanically and without feeling.

Perhaps the reason why Katara finds closure without forgiveness or revenge is that she chooses the ground in-between. She has found justice without needing to serve it because life, in its cruel and karmic ways, had already reduced Yon Rha to a shell of the man he once was. Had Katara been any more merciless towards Yon Rha, it would still have been merciful compared to how he suffers in his present life. Ending Yon Rha would be a waste of Katara’s efforts.

So Katara says, “I think I understand.”

And so we, the audience, think we understand too. Only then we remember what Katara had said before:

“I always wondered what kind of person could do such a thing, but now that I see you…”

Katara is fourteen when she says “now that I see you.”

She was eight when she first saw Yon Rha.

In a flashback to the death of Katara’s mother, Katara sees that the “kind of person [who] could do such a thing” is someone ominous, terrifying, and inhuman, a portrayal exemplified by the low-angle in which Yon Rha is framed in contrast to the high-angle looking down on Katara. In this shot, Yon Rha towers over Katara both in height and in authority. Thus, she has always imagined her mother’s killer to be the same way he has appeared to her when she was a helpless, vulnerable child – he appears as a militaristic man, an arrogant man, a powerful man.

_____

“Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.”

– George Orwell, “Revenge is Sour”

_____

“That was him. That was the monster.”

– Katara
_____

Katara says that Yon Rha is the monster, but their roles are now reversed – Katara is the aggressor and Yon Rha is the victim; Katara looms over Yon Rha at a low-angle while Yon Rha is looked down upon from a high-angle. Ultimately, a monster is more than their cruelty and vileness; a monster has power; a monster has control over a nightmare.

Only now it is not Yon Rha in control, but Katara.

_____

“I’m not the helpless little girl I was when they came.”

– Katara
_____

In the end, the issue had never been about Katara’s strength – instead, it was about her weakness. As a child, she was vulnerable while Yon Rha was infallible, and so the image of Yon Rha looming over her is the one that persisted for years, plaguing her even as she grew up and grew stronger. Hence, the Yon Rha Katara saw as an eight-year-old is the Yon Rha she would have no qualms about killing.

But that Yon Rha belongs to another time. He belongs to a time in which Katara was weak and Yon Rha was strong, and that time is the past and the past is unbreachable. Thus, revenge can only exist in the ghost of a memory; revenge can only exist in fantasies.

Perhaps the childish fantasy aspect of revenge is why the platitudes “revenge is empty” and “revenge is meaningless” are thrown around so carelessly today, so much so that they no longer hold any weight. Of course, these statements are true in many ways, but they also oversimplify complex emotional responses to trauma. For Katara, revenge is empty because it is not what she needs.

Consciously or subconsciously, Katara recognizes her needs the moment when they’re met – with her suspending shards of ice in the air, all pointed towards Yon Rha. Then, fantasies and illusions shatter, falling away like ice turning back to water and splashing on the ground, unused. Katara now has power, not only through her skill in waterbending, but through the present over the past. Stripped of all his height and authority, the monster that was the Yon Rha of six years ago had already been killed. Now all that is left is her, standing over the humble-villager Yon Rha, over her fear and grief and rage, over the past that once haunted her. Over her memories.
_____

“I wanted to do it. I wanted to take out all my anger at him, but I couldn’t. I don’t know if it’s because I’m too weak to do it or because I’m strong enough not to.”

– Katara
_____

By the end of her journey, the ideologies at conflict during the beginning of the episode are still at war within Katara. Katara holds power over her memories, but she is not at peace with them. Katara is able to forgive some, but she is not able to forgive all. The loss of her mother still hurts, but the loss of Katara’s innocence is replaced by the affirmation of her maturity. She has not let go of her rage, but she is no longer blinded by it.

Still, no matter how bittersweet the ending to this story is, it is also full of hope and new beginnings: The hold old memories had over Katara is broken. Six years’ worth of hurt and damage, though it cannot be smoothed over the course of a few days, can finally begin to heal. The wounds have been cleansed; the ghosts have been chased away. Now, Katara is strong where she was once weak. Now, Katara has found closure.

Now, Katara is free.

It’s Friday. It’s the last Friday before everyone will be isolated in their homes for the next who-knows-how-long (an endless April, a burst of summer, and then December will be upon the world). Unable to tap someone on the shoulder, or catch their arm, or brush their hand. Some will keep in contact with little screens, trying and failing to diffuse awkwardness created by miles of distance and irritating audio feedback. Others, like you, will be as they always were — alone, or so you think.

It’s Friday, and the last person you would see is laughing with you in typical teenage self-deprecation fare as you two impulsively share a chocolate bar from the school vending machine. It’s good. Disgustingly good. You may regret this later when the weight you struggled so much to lose rounds your stomach and thighs again. When each day is just a repeat of escapism, a test of how much more delusion you can fabricate. When you sleep so much that your body’s melatonin swallows you in waves that threaten to drown you on land. But right now you do not regret which face you wave to at the front door, a recognizable figure slotting neatly into a car, and then away.

You two are history, or about to become history, yet every time you think it’s the final parting you collide, align, like stars. Naturally, deliberately. Again and again, there are the moments when you sit alone in the conversation, exhaling an unheard sigh. Thinking, “it’s finally happening now.” Fading in the crowd, the invisible friend, but suddenly you are alone with her and you’re children again. You understand each other.

It’s Friday, the last Friday, and you will not forget the friend you’ve known forever, the object of your resentment and envy, of your fondness and reconsideration, of time and reconciliation, and it’s a goodbye — or so you think.

(Here’s another creative writing piece because I guess I would rather fabricate an entire storyline than talk about my week. The following work is loosely inspired by the historical figure Qin Shi Huang.)

In Retrograde

When his walls were inlaid with copper, when his floors were polished with silver, when his roofs were tipped in gold, that was when his robes sunk into lead, pulling bone into tissue. It was then the emperor understood that the luxuries he amassed were not meant for a mere mortal to hold.

And yet these were the gifts he inherited through his war and rule. The life he stole, the life he preserved, the life to be continued. He had torn the mandate of heaven out from the skies himself, climbed the highest, jagged peak in the Middle Kingdom to receive this right. Every citizen wrote with his calligraphy, exchanged goods with his currency, crossed mountains and valleys with his roads. He was already a god in everything but name.

From beyond the grave // etched memories and sharp waves // sweeping me away

Death was blood in his mouth, coughed up from his throat, tasted in the air of a corpse. Even before he knew war he was already living it. Once, he was a little boy watching torn-up, spit-out soldiers come home. He watched them lie down in grass fields while thinking about razed ones. Human life was too fleeting, civilization too fragile. The heart was a wound of the mind.

With every passing day, his strength withered a little more, leaving his legs weak and his arms brittle. The joints between his muscles stiffening; one day he would be stuck, unable to do anything but fade. And then the palace of peace he built with red and raw hands — the copper, silver, gold — would crumple back to dirt.

Colored mercury // orbiting you lovingly // or is it poison?

When he first saw mercury, it was yet another metal, not too different from the endless riches he already held. But then, upon closer examination, there was the teardrop shape of it, the ever-shifting luster, like morning dew tipping forward a blade of grass. It was liquid freeform, yet the surface was brimming with a tension just on the edge of bursting. It was ethereal. It was eternity.

The next week, his physician presented him with an elixir of mercury, just as he had ordered. The pill burned his throat when he swallowed it down, but even as his limbs grew heavy, even heavier than before, his veins were pulsing with something precious, something divine.

What makes a thing dead // floating in the in-between // is it just sleeping?

He is asleep. He is rarely awake now, his pounding head unable to bear the vertigo of consciousness. He is barely breathing. But in the splendor of his dreams, there is no pain anymore, only the celestial city above him where spirits spin fate, weaving colored mercury into the fabric of the sky.

There, he sees his desire reflected in the surface’s sheen; there lies his promise and his relief. So, from the earth, he stretches his arms out. Longer, longer, longer, until he is stretched so thin that his marrow becomes thread and his bones become needles. With his spindled fingers, he shakes the beaded cords, shakes the trembling dew drops until they are freed in a burst of rain.

The heavens darken. He tilts his head back, parts his lips. Dark orbs pool on his tongue, and he finally realizes it — why the taste of mercury is so haunting.

Death is blood in his mouth, and immortality is too.

A Little Closer to the Edge

“A Little Closer to the Edge” by Ocean Vuong is a 20-line poem composed of 10 couplets that, as reflected by its structure, contemplates the duality of passion. While the poem focuses on the coupling between a man and a woman, the poem’s speaker is their son who, by narrating their actions, is imagining his own conception. Given that the speaker is the living consequence of his parents’ relationship, his access to hindsight allows him to highlight the transience of love and the inevitability of sin.

The scene of the poem begins by describing a moment between a man and a woman: “Young enough to believe nothing / will change them, they step, hand-in-hand” (1-2). In just the first line, Vuong foreshadows the fracture in the man and woman’s relationship by ending the line on “nothing.” As such, he suggests that the man and the woman will soon believe in nothing, faithless and disillusioned. Nonetheless, in the present, they still believe that “nothing will change them,” or in other words, they believe that they will forever be a loving couple who are “hand-in-hand.”

Once again, Vuong deconstructs this portrait of affection through the imagery of his next stanza. The couple is stepping “into the bomb crater. The night full / of  black teeth” (3-4). Together, the images of the bomb crater and black teeth create a mood of unsuspected naivety while setting an ominous tone. The bomb crater may not pose an immediate threat to the couple, but it is a remnant of destruction, a premonition of what is to come. Meanwhile, the night, whose teeth and danger remains undetected by the couple, waits for an opportunity to strike — when they render themselves vulnerable by entering its mouth, the bomb crater.

The third and fourth stanza alludes to the transformation of the couple’s relationship in comparison to its current state: “His faux Rolex, weeks / from shattering against her cheek, now dims / like a miniature moon behind her hair” (4-6). In these lines, the speaker juxtaposes a future act of violence, in which the man hits the woman and shatters his watch, with gentle imagery from the present, in which the watch illuminates the woman like a moon. Then, the fourth stanza introduces an allusion to the Bible by asserting that “in this version the snake is headless — stilled / like a cord unraveled from the lovers’ ankles” (7-8). Here, “this version” is both a parallel to the story of Adam and Eve while also being a fleeting stage of the couple’s relationship. For now, the snake that tempted Adam and Eve into sin is powerless, but only temporarily. Line 7 ends with the word “stilled,” emphasizing how the snake’s temptation has not been eliminated entirely, still present as a loosened cord fallen at the lovers’ feet. 

The next few stanzas describe the man and woman initiating sexual intimacy as “he lifts her white cotton skirt, revealing another hour” (9-10). The phrase “revealing another hour” is followed by wordplay between the phrases “his hand” and “his hands” (10), which suggests both the image of the man’s hands and the hands of a clock. By implying the passage of time, this clock motif highlights the dichotomy between present and future as well as between the man and the woman. As the speaker calls upon his father — “O father, O foreshadow, press / into her as the field shreds itself / with cricket cries” (11-13) — he acknowledges the despair that he would cause his mother and their home. In the lines, “show me how ruin makes a home / out of  hip bones” (13-14), the man is holding onto the woman’s hip bones during sexual intercourse, conceiving a child and establishing a soon-to-be broken home. Similarly, the speaker beseeches his mother — “O mother, / O minutehand, teach me / how to hold a man the way thirst / holds water” (14-17) — with a focus on his mother’s desperation and need, the comparison to thirst and water emphasizing her dependence on his father. In both his invocations, the speaker asks his parents to show or teach him their behaviors, which reflects how their actions have left lasting impressions on their son. The rest of the 9th stanza further reveals their son’s adapted behaviors as he proclaims, “Let every river envy / our mouths. Let every kiss hit the body / like a season” (17-19). In using the pronoun “our,” Vuong captures the legacy of passion and sin while repetition of the word “let” demonstrates the duality of being bold and reckless in love. Finally, the last two lines relate back to Adam and Eve: “Where apples thunder / the earth with red hooves. & I am your son” (19-20). The apple in the story of Adam and Eve is known as the forbidden fruit, so an abundance of falling apples correlates to the man and woman’s overindulgence in their sexuality. Finally, “& I am your son” renders the speaker as the ultimate witness to the man and woman’s sin, allowing him to testify about its inescapable nature.

(To celebrate the beginning of our poetry unit, I decided to share a poem I wrote recently.)

Bone-deep

(My father keeps a notebook full of names.)

 

The paper is brittle, curled, faded, almost

as if it was slipped into liquid amber, sticky resin dried to preserve the

 

stark black strokes, ink glided over.

A collection of strokes is a character; a line of characters is a name.

 

And there lies my family—

 

the living, the deceased, and the memories—

 

wrought in a language I can only half-speak.

 

阿姨

(Āyí)

My mother has a sister who lives in Hangzhou. Not the

Hangzhou of sleek skyscrapers reflecting silver on the West Lake, but the

Hangzhou of cracked asphalt, rusted iron gates, paintless walls, and

a square bordered by four identical apartment complexes.

Once my family chose the wrong one and climbed six flights to the top, only

to be greeted by a stranger.

But this time we correct our mistake, and we carry

our luggage up the winding staircase

where beyond the door,

my mother’s sister, my Ayi, waits to receive us.

 

孬孬

(Nāo nāo)

Ayi’s home has changed very little since I last saw it. Nevertheless,

time shifts and wears away familiarity, and with it,

comfort. Open stares become shy glances directed towards

Nao Nao, who is too tall to fit within short expectations, who

speaks to me in quiet and cautious tones because I am foreign

to here and to the streets he weaves so seamlessly through.

We arrive at a convenience store; he buys me matcha-flavored ice cream. It melts

smooth and sweet and silk-like on my tongue, and

a thousand steps and six flights of stairs later, the taste

still lingers.

 

苹果

(Píngguǒ)

For just one day, my family takes to the highway and enters the Hangzhou

of wide sidewalks, of automatic doors, of tiled walls, of Ping Guo.

She too lives in an apartment complex, but it towers above the city, above Ayi and Nao Nao,

so when she plays “Swan Lake” on the piano, her agile hands

coaxing the melody until it floats, suspended

amongst the clouds, a sliver of envy rises within me and stretches into a vast gap reaching from

her balcony to the ground.

But then she asks me to play after, and years of practice soften the keys to my touch.

That is when I am reminded that I am older than her, that her eyes still hold wonder,

because she is the one looking up to me.

 

小惠子

(Xiǎo huìzi)

The difference between Hangzhou and Yiwu

is the distance traveled by train and the span of increased grandeur, and

swathed in all this fortune is

Xiao Hui Zi. Her life is a delicacy

attentively assembled by the manufacturing company

her mother owns. Upon my visitation, she and her mother bestow presents—

confectionaries, hair clips, compliments

—as freely as air. Yet when I indulge Xiao Hui Zi in a game where the only rule

is to make her smile, I realize it is companionship which

she cherishes most.

 

伯伯

(Bóbo)

This time, the road outlasts the time from dawn to dusk and descends

into mountains, whose gentle crests are curved lower than city buildings, whose paths descend

into a town even lower. The scenery is tinted by

dim shade, faint lampposts, muddied walls,

yet when my uncle, Bobo, brings out a homegrown watermelon, he cuts through it using a

knife that gleams sharply with the silver of skyscrapers. It is

red. Vibrant and unmistakable as the

paper envelopes we generously gift and graciously receive, as the

love that beats in our chests and pulses in our veins, as the blood that

binds us across oceans, across skies, and the ties between—

 

Heaven and Earth

(Our heritage is traced on stone.)

In between the dips in the mountains,

where the first shards of

daylight cast this humble town into color, lies the

purpose for our presence

and the

proof of our existence.

So my father and my uncle chase

the rising sun into the horizon, where

stone slopes culminate into

stone graves.

 

杰梅

(Jié méi)

Incense wafts into the air, potent as

steam that rises from the center of a kitchen table, where chopsticks withdraw and

 

goodbyes fall, where even as the table empties, it is still full

with leftover grains of rice.

 

Smoke obscures the tomb, a transient silver shroud,

but the names of my ancestors are carved

 

in more than the tangible,

in more than a language I can only half-speak.

 

Because my father keeps a notebook full of names, and

 

mine

 

is one of them.

 

I Leave From Beijing

(Even as the plane ascends higher, invisible silhouettes remain in the window view.)

 

And maybe south in Hangzhou,

 

where skyscrapers blur into silver reflections on the West Lake,

Ayi says goodbye to Nao Nao at the door before sending him to

dash down six flight of stairs into the summer heat with the taste of

matcha lingering on his tongue, 

 

and maybe one day,

 

Nao Nao wanders astray from the streets he knows so well to where the city

transforms and blossoms, leaving behind his

simple neighborhood of timeworn buildings for towering, glass complexes so that

from her balcony, Ping Guo can see his figure running across the wide sidewalks below,

 

and maybe once a month,

 

Ping Guo stands by a pair of long metal rails, patiently waiting for

a train to whisk her away to the bustling markets of Yiwu because when she steps off,

Xiao Hui Zi stumbles over and tugs her toward her mother’s office, showering Ping Guo with

confectionaries and hair clips and compliments,

 

and maybe each year,

 

Xiao Hui Zi watches her mother write a letter full of well-wishes before slipping money into a

paper envelope, and it travels to a simple, beautiful town where

Bobo slices into a home-grown watermelon, shoes padding past

dim shade, faint lampposts, muddied walls,

 

and maybe if his eyes search far enough, he’ll see

 

how the road slopes

downward, plunging deep into the mountains, past

tall grass and short trees, onto the

remnants of a dirt path now revived, onto an

ancient, roughly-carved staircase

—which ages, dies, reawakens—

to deliver us, to return us, once more to our ancestors’ graves.

“We tend not to choose the unknown which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.”

Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

In 8th grade, course selection was completed on Infinite Campus. An absurd, nostalgic thought, to not have to tolerate the tedium and frustration that often resulted from my experiences with Schoolinks. Nonetheless, even amidst such changes such as the district’s ever-shifting preferences, even amidst the haphazardly stacked college brochures purposefully confined to the corners of my desk, I am reminded of that time.

It was 8th grade, yet everyone around me was already planning out their high school careers—maximizing their AP classes, testing into higher-level classes, taking a few courses over the summer. Meanwhile, I unknowingly stumbled into being what you might call an optimal set of courses. I never intended it to happen, but in a sequence of events that saw me registering for classes because of my friends’ initiatives or teachers’ recommendations, it somehow did.

Now, once again, I cannot bring myself to see far beyond the end of the school year, cannot even fathom what a future at college is like without even knowing which one I will end up attending. If we were in an alternative universe where Covid-19 didn’t happen, maybe my life would be more put together. But because of quarantine, I was also forced to confront the veracity of my ambitions and to unravel an illusion so seamless that I even deluded myself.

Once again, I remembered that I was unknowingly stumbling in the dark, not sure where I wanted to go. The projects I wanted to take up mostly for the sake of an impressive college resume (for the affirmation that I was demonstrating initiative and passion by the end of high school) fell by the wayside. After all, if quarantine was worth anything at all, then it at least isolated me from the pressure to succeed and to prove myself. Although I have tried, I am not one of those individuals who found renewed purpose in their self-isolation — no new workout regimen, no new comprehensive study plan, no start-up or business ventures. The closest I came to that was picking up my long-neglected writing hobby again. It was not much, but at least it was a start.

A start during junior year, however, seems a little too late in the face of high school’s end. Walking in the high school halls, enclosed by small lockers and fluorescent lights, I knew that I was a senior but I couldn’t feel it. What happened to my out-of-state field trips, trips to national competitions where I could laugh with my friends on the plane? Where was my niche, the thing I could call mine and that everyone would know me for? What was my magnum opus of high school, the proof of my existence during this time? I was a sophomore who woke up in a self I didn’t recognize.

Or maybe the ideals of the past simply were obsolete. College, I once believed, was the final decider of my fate. But I look to my brother: intelligent, kind, and qualified in every way (even if I loathe to admit it) and realize that this was just the beginning of my life. I am allowed to not know where I’m going, and to have “starts” to myself that didn’t have to be for the sole purpose of a college application, and to be a bit of a wanderer.

Yes, I have doubts. I want the opportunity to explore different passions and disciplines, to develop my love for writing and psychology beyond hobbies — such a hope would be much more difficult to accomplish if I enrolled in a college in which I already decided on a safe, lucrative STEM major. Unlike 8th grade, I am not sure if I could once again stumble into the unknown and accidentally have success at my fingertips. But even as experiences disappoint, even as I strand myself, directionless, I cleanse my ambitions, I give myself time to discover meaning and purpose again.

The horizon looms close; it is a lifetime away. I am not ending.

Somewhere in Korea, a 19-year-old girl holds onto a handlebar on the bus during her route to school. At the same time, anywhere, everywhere, someone continues on with their routine, the pace of their lives measured by the length of their strides. On this bus in Korea, the girl recognizes this moment for the brief intersection of these unrelated lives for what it is: an ordinary moment.

Except, from a cursory scan of her surroundings, she spots a pair of shoes she doesn’t recognize. And the person attached to these pair of shoes, with his own pace and stride, will transform these ordinary moments into something a little more.

This scene marks the beginning of the manhwa Shades and Shadows by Honjga, a story centered around Shin Hye-in and her last year of high school. And just like Hye-in did not recognize the significance this moment on the bus has on her life, when I first found this manhwa, I did not expect it to resonate with me as much as it did.

After all, there was a multitude of factors that affected my initial perception. First, finding a genuinely good story on your own is quite difficult—whether in comics, books, or shows—and with no one to look to for manhwa recommendations, I had to trial-and-error it myself. Second, this is a manhwa I found on the website Lezhin, which contains many manhwas of dubious content and execution. But the most prominently: Third, the summary is quite misleading.

Hye-in is a quiet, introspective high school senior. As an aspiring art major, she hones her skills in the art club. When a handsome new T.A. named Lee Hanyeong starts at the club, Hye-in’s curiosity awakens. Mr. Lee’s talented, popular and sensitive. So why on earth has he taken such an interest in her? In the complex world of high school, things are never how they appear. It all depends on how you look at them… 

Well, technically speaking, the summary isn’t completely inaccurate or anything. However, the phrasing matters. While this summary places great emphasis on the “romance” and “intrigue” between Hye-in and Hanyeong’s relationship (which would have been difficult to portray in a good light given that they are student and TA), it is one characterized more by perfunctory politeness and amiable acquaintanceship (at least until Character Development™ strikes and they develop more meaningful friendship). Moreover, as the manhwa progresses past the first few chapters, it becomes clear that the story’s focus does not orbit solely around Hye-in and Hanyeong. Instead, it shifts between a startlingly real and sympathetic cast of characters, revealing to the audience fragments of their background, individuality, and budding agency underneath the cracked surface of their pretenses.

Because of this story’s commitment to realism, the summary’s assertion that “in the complex world of high school, things are never how they appear” contains a pretentious and melodramatic flair while this story is much more grounded and subtle. “The complex world of high school” is not complex because of drastic situations—no, high school itself is a simple concept—but because of the varying interpretations of a situation that arise from an amalgamation of character interactions, individual perspectives, what is said, and what is left unsaid. And so one character’s perception is never the whole story: “things are never how they appear.”

Nonetheless, it took a while for me to become truly invested in Shades and Shadows. Realistic and grounded as it is, it doesn’t give into characterization or plot developments that would make for easy gratification and quick investment on the audience’s part. Rather than resolve conflicts with simple confessions or conversations, it delves into discomfort, messiness, and the unnameable, lingering desires rooted within individuals and left to linger, unable to be fully addressed in the restrictive constructs of society.

And it is that—the unnameable, lingering desires—that touched me the most, though it took me some time to appreciate it. Our day-to-day lives are characterized by being ordinary, yet we still feel every little joy, sorrow, and fear so acutely. Fiction often relies on the way it is framed to convey this kind of emotional resonance, and Hongja does this masterfully with Shades and Shadow’s beautiful art style.

The watercolor art makes for a soft, understated palette, but the artist’s creativity within this medium captures the impact of a character’s emotion without having to even name it. Moreover, it elevates the bittersweet air surrounding this manhwa, with it always feeling like the characters are ceaselessly pursuing true contentment or fulfillment, even if they cannot fathom it.

As such, I can’t recall another story that spoke to my experiences in high school as much as Shades and Shadows did. Just as Hye-in and her friends consider their relationships, their passions, their future, and their self-expression, I find myself wrapped within my own perspectives, fearing yet anticipating change. And as these characters hit the turning point of their arcs, finally seeing their own value and hearing their own voice, in their reflections, I discover a piece of myself as well.

A link to the manhwa, if anyone is interested.

Nostalgia is a familiar stranger. A friend you have known for so long that you take them for granted, even when they had gradually crept out of your life step by step, so softly you do not notice. And as they faded away off to the distant past, you have learned who you are without them, but you also forgot who you were before.

Then, the memories return to you, so discrepant from your current reality, so beautiful it renders your surroundings ugly, so gentle it hurts. You think to yourself, as naive and ignorant as it is, I wish things would go back to the way they were.

For me, the nostalgia that struck me was about Mario Kart. Every Friday my dad, brother, and I would convene in front of the TV and eagerly await the menu to appear on the screen. Of course, there were a few preliminary steps. Our family may have owned a Wii gaming system, but we did not own any actual Nintendo games — at least in the traditional sense. Thus, whenever my friends came over and wanted to play a game of Mario Kart, I would have to describe how my uncle bought a disk in China that held dozens of games that were in Japanese, and thus we had to go through a grand total of 3 loading screens to finally arrive at a game, and no, we could not change the language setting.

Now, with quarantine and the many preoccupations of life, I have not had friends over to play Japanese Mario Kart for a long time, and even if I did, I would probably just shrug in lieu of explaining why the game is in Japanese. That’s something that changed too, as I no longer babbled on, not quite knowing how to grasp my words.

Of course, my needlessly convoluted explanation was not helped by not being able to read Japanese. Whereas my friends would bring up the names of the circuits — Mushroom Cap, DK Summit, or Coconut Mall — they held little meaning to me. Instead, I knew these courses by the ways my kart would bounce high off impossibly tall mushrooms, the way my character would be shot through a canon with a boom to land in the soft snow of the mountain peak, or the way I would sometimes wound up on the wrong escalator in the mall and despair in the resulting loss of my 1st place title. With no knowledge of the official titles for the circuits, my family lovingly called them “the mushroom one,” “the snow one,” and of course, “The Mall.”

To my eternal chagrin, my brother had a monopoly on playing as Yoshi, who also happened to be my favorite character. But of course, like the magnanimous child I was, I graciously chose to play Princess Peach instead. My dad, meanwhile, chose whichever character suited his whims at a time. And so we would choose our karts and begin.

Eventually, however, the most anticipated event of our Friday nights lost its vibrancy and importance. My brother became indifferent to the Wii games that captivated his younger self’s imagination, and my dad would not always have the time to participate in a match. In the next few years, Mario Kart became an occasional time-filler, and as I zoomed through the courses, improving my time for each course little by little, I found that the fun to be found in my memories came mostly from the people around me.

In that sense, nostalgia is a familiar stranger, but it is also a friend. Occasionally, when our schedules happen to realign again, we would turn on the TV and play another round.

For a moment, things are the way they used to be.